Hockey is Back

Hockey is back as pre-season and training camp comes to end tonight. So, October begins the 2009-2010 NHL season. Looking forward to seeing if the Pittsburgh Penguins can defend the Cup from all challenges this season. The action starts tomorrow on Versus with some keys games, Washington and Boston, and San Jose and Colorado. Joe Sakic’s 19 jersey is officially retired in Denver tomorrow night.

And in Europe, Detroit and St Louis and Chicago and Florida are starting their season with double header games on Friday and Saturday. Should be great action.
I look forward to watching HNIC on NHL Network (US), but I have heard rumors that the network may reduce the number of games. From Yahoo! NHL Sports Blog, The two line pass posts in What We Learned:

Minus of the Weekend

This week the award goes to not a person, but a thing. Steve Lepore reported that the NHL Network would no longer air every Hockey Night in Canada of the season. What’s the matter, need to squeeze a few more replays out of that 2009 Stanley Cup Final?

We’ll almost never get the late game, and we won’t get Coaches Corner and the Hotstove ever week. Granted, we’ll get a couple extra games a week instead, but this is still a terrible decision that, like all decisions made by the NHL, will only serve to upset hockey fans. It’s not like they couldn’t do both.

Good work as always, National Hockey League.

I will be disappointed if this true, but the network website appears to have HNIC games scheduled for most Saturday in October and November. So, we’ll see what the future holds.